By DAN MANGAN
June 20, 2008
Court papers unsealed yesterday suggested for the first time that real-estate swindler Andrew Kissel was killed over a large amount of cash stashed in his Connecticut mansion.
When Greenwich cops searched the mansion on April 3, 2006 - the day Kissel was found there blindfolded, bound and repeatedly stabbed - they discovered the possible hiding place for the money had been broken into and was empty, documents state.
Kissel's driver, Carlos Trujillo, is charged with hiring his cousin, Leonard Trujillo, to kill Kissel shortly before the multimillionaire was due to plead guilty to massive fraud. Yesterday, a judge unsealed large portions of affidavits cops filed this year to obtain arrest warrants for both Trujillos.
Two days before his body was discovered, Kissel had a long, "heated argument about a large sum of money" with his estranged wife, Hayley, police said. The spat took place in front of Carlos and movers who were taking her belongings away, the affidavits state.
"According to Carlos, [Kissel] later told him that the money had been hidden in the house," cops wrote. Hayley told police she searched the house that day for a bag of money that she suspected Kissel had stashed.
When they searched the mansion's master bedroom closet on April 3, they found an access panel - whose lock had been broken - that led to a crawl space. "The crawl space was . . . empty," affidavits said.
Cops said Carlos Trujillo's brother, Jorge, had worked for Kissel's Hanrock Group, but went back to his native Colombia when the company disbanded in 2005. At the time, Jorge allegedly stole what other employees estimated was between $200,000 to $600,000 from Hanrock's safe.
Police also quoted an ex-Kissel employee who said Kissel "treated Carlos 'like crap.' "
Once, Carlos drove to Massachusetts for a barbecue, but was phoned by Kissel "and told to return to Greenwich as soon as possible," the employee said.
When he got there, "Carlos was surprised to learn that [Kissel] had recalled him from Massachusetts so that he could get him a hamburger at Wendy's," police wrote. "Carlos related . . . that he went to Wendy's and got [Kissel] his hamburger, but that the victim took one bite, did not care for it, and then sent Carlos out to get a pizza."
Mark Sherman, Leonard Trujillo's lawyer, noted that elsewhere in the affidavits, police admit they paid witnesses. "It's outrageous that a witness has one version of a story before he's paid by the police, and another version after the check clears," Sherman said.
Both Leonard - who could face the death penalty - and Carlos claim they had nothing to do with Kissel's murder.
